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                  <p class="p_Heading1"><span class="f_Heading1">Activity</span></p>



  
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                <p class="p_TextIndentedL2"><img src="d_activityexample.png" width="158" height="94" border="0" alt="d_Activityexample"></p>
<p class="p_BodyText"><span class="f_BodyText">An </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;">Activity</span><span class="f_BodyText"> organizes and specifies the participation of subordinate behaviors, such as </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;">sub-Activities</span><span class="f_BodyText"> or </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="action.htm">Actions</a></span><span class="f_BodyText">, to reflect the control and data flow of a process. Activities are used in <a href="activitydiagram.htm">Activity diagrams</a> for various modeling purposes, from procedural-type application development for system design, to business process modeling of organizational structures or work flow.</span></p>
<p class="p_BodyText"><span class="f_BodyText">The following simple diagram of an Activity contains Action elements and includes <a href="activityparameternodes.htm">input parameters and output parameters</a>.</span></p>
<p class="p_TextIndentedL2"><img src="simple%20activity%20diagram.png" width="674" height="228" border="0" alt="Simple Activity Diagram"></p>
<p class="p_BodyText"><span class="f_BodyText">You can define an Activity as a </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;">composite element</span><span class="f_BodyText">, either during creation or during later edits. However, when creating a composite Activity element you can also use the </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;">Structured Activity</span><span class="f_BodyText"> element, which is tailored to this purpose. If converting an Activity element, right-click on the element and select the </span><span class="f_MenuKeyField">Advanced | Make Composite </span><span class="f_BodyText">context menu option. The </span><span class="f_UIControl">New Structured Activity</span><span class="f_BodyText"> dialog displays; for information on this dialog, see the </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="subactivity.htm">Structured Activity</a></span><span class="f_BodyText"> topic.</span></p>
<p class="p_BodyText"><span class="f_BodyText">Certain properties can be <a href="activitynotation.htm">graphically depicted</a> on an Activity. The Actions in an Activity can be further organized by </span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;"><a href="activitypartition.htm">Activity Partitions</a></span><span class="f_BodyText">.</span></p>
<p class="p_SubHeadingL1"><span class="f_SubHeadingL1">Toolbox Icon</span></p>
<p class="p_TextIndentedL2"><img src="e_activity.png" width="170" height="26" border="0" alt="e_Activity"></p>
<p class="p_SubHeadingL1"><span class="f_SubHeadingL1">OMG UML Specification</span></p>
<p class="p_BodyText"><span class="f_BodyText">The OMG UML specification (</span><span class="f_BodyText" style="font-style: italic;">UML Superstructure Specification, v2.1.1, p. 318</span><span class="f_BodyText">) states:</span></p>
<p class="p_OMGText"><span class="f_OMGText">An activity specifies the coordination of executions of subordinate behaviors, using a control and data flow model. The subordinate behaviors coordinated by these models may be initiated because other behaviors in the model finish executing, because objects and data become available, or because events occur external to the flow. The flow of execution is modeled as activity nodes connected by activity edges. A node can be the execution of a subordinate behavior, such as an arithmetic computation, a call to an operation, or manipulation of object contents. Activity nodes also include flow-of-control constructs, such as synchronization, decision, and concurrency control. Activities may form invocation hierarchies invoking other activities, ultimately resolving to individual actions. In an object-oriented model, activities are usually invoked indirectly as methods bound to operations that are directly invoked.</span></p>
<p class="p_OMGText"><span class="f_OMGText">Activities may describe procedural computation. In this context, they are the methods corresponding to operations on classes. Activities may be applied to organizational modeling for business process engineering and workflow. In this context, events often originate from inside the system, such as the finishing of a task, but also from outside the system, such as a customer call. Activities can also be used for information system modeling to specify system level processes. Activities may contain actions of various kinds:</span></p>
<ul style="text-indent: 0px; margin-left: 26px; list-style-position: outside;">
<li><span class="f_OMGText">Occurrences of primitive functions, such as arithmetic functions.</span></li>
<li><span class="f_OMGText">Invocations of behavior, such as activities.</span></li>
<li><span class="f_OMGText">Communication actions, such as sending of signals.</span></li>
<li><span class="f_OMGText">Manipulations of objects, such as reading or writing attributes or associations.</span></li>
</ul>
<p class="p_OMGText"><span class="f_OMGText">Actions have no further decomposition in the activity containing them. However, the execution of a single action may induce the execution of many other actions. For example, a call action invokes an operation that is implemented by an activity containing actions that execute before the call action completes.</span></p>




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